The DIY Touch Screen Kitchen Computer

Ryan's wife had a dream: a kitchen computer integrated into the kitchen to manage her recipes, keep tabs with her shopping and to-do lists, and also provide internet access so she could hit up her favourite cooking sites (hopefully including The Kitchn). Ryan being the good husband and tech-minded DIYer set to make her dream come true, creating his own touchscreen computer inspired by the iPhone for all these duties and more.

Ryan listed his wife's requirements for the kitchen device as such:

must be discrete [sic] and look like a digital picture frame when not being used.

The impressive part besides the whole installation was Ryan used Microsoft's Active Desktop to emulate the iPhone interface (his wife's request), utilizing the Comfort On Screen Keyboard Pro program for input UI, alongside integrating a slew of useful features such as Twitter, Skype, iTunes, Kitchen Database barcode scanner, and a cooking timer. The project is an amazing example of DIY ingenuity that shames most off the shelf consumer kitchen tech items, and perhaps gives insight how the iPad will find itself being used by home cooks in the near future.